If Ragnor was aware of it, he gave no sign. He urged her into the hotel. They stopped for their keys. She gave her room number; he gave his.

“So you really do have a room here,” she murmured.

“Of course. What did you think?”

“I don’t know,” she told him honestly, then added softly, “Well, goodnight.”

“I’ll walk you to your room.”

She nodded, not objecting.

When she opened her door, he entered first. She watched him, amused, as he went through the room, checking the bathroom, the bedroom area, the sitting area, and then beneath the bed.

“Are you expecting an evil chambermaid?” she asked him.

She leaned against the door. Her head continued to spin. She wondered wryly if she’d heard whispering, or the sloshing of alcohol in her own veins.

“Are you all right?” he asked, responding with a question rather than an answer.

“Perfectly,” she said, but stumbled as she tried to cross the floor with dignity.

He laughed, coming to her aid, leading her to the foot of the bed. “Too much booze, eh?” he queried, sitting beside her. “Your fairy crown is on the side of your head.” As he spoke, he reached for the headdress, removing the pins and untangling it from her hair. He cast it toward the armchair facing the shuttered window by the bed. Perfect aim. He hadn’t even looked. His eyes were on hers. His fingers threaded into her hair, smoothing it. Knuckles grazed her cheek. Then he kissed her.

The heat that instantly pervaded her was electric. Like a shock, it traveled from her mouth to her torso and limbs; she trembled, instinctively curling her arms around his neck, holding on to something steady.

He kissed like a practiced lover, parting her lips with a controlled, hot, wet passion. She tasted his lips, his tongue; the movement of it within her mouth seemed to be an invasion so intimate it elicited anticipation throughout her body. When his lips parted from hers, a bare breath away, she felt the moistness, the hint of slow, burning lava that remained. She felt the rising thunder of her heart; the pulse of blood, the fever of it. She inhaled with a deep shudder.

Should I have?

Had he spoken the words, or like shadows and whispers in the night, had she imagined them?

“No,” she whispered. His eyes were still on hers. She moistened her lips to speak again, silently praying first. Dear God, don’t let it be the alcohol!

But it wasn’t, and she knew it though the words she spoke next were surely helped along by the flames of too many Bellinis. “Actually ... I’ve been dying to see your chest”

“Really?” he murmured softly, his whisper then against her forehead. “I’ll show you mine . .. if you’ll show me yours.”

“That’s a very old line.”

“Not so old as you think.”

She reached up, touched the planes of his face, and found his mouth again. His lips remained fused to hers, tongue entangled, as he struggled from the Edwardian coat and cravat and shirt. She broke from the kiss, breathless again, her palms against his chest. Muscle rippled there, almost as if he were a weight lifter. Something else. He wore a medallion. A religious medallion. Beautiful, old, of a Celtic design. It appeared to be a finely crafted cross. She felt a strange relief flood through her. Surely this had to mean . . .

That he liked jewelry?

She realized that she was just standing there, staring.

“Well? Did you just want to see my chest, or were you planning on doing something with it?” She nuzzled against the supple plane of it, fingering the medallion, feeling a greater flood of longing. It had to be okay . . .

The intoxication of touching him was overwhelming. She forgot the medallion, and all her fears. “I always thought you had great hands, too.”

“Ah, well, you know, I wouldn’t want to seem loose or easy or anything, but lots of people have seen my hands. But not so many know what they can do.”

“Is it that spectacular?”

“You can judge for yourself.”

He scooped her to him, bearing her down to the expanse of the bed, his mouth on hers, lingering on her throat, moving down to her collarbone, to the cleft in the fantasy costume. She wasn’t sure how or when, and she must have been a participant, but the white and gold costume was off, and she was quickly aware of just how talented he was with his hands ... and his mouth, and even the contours of his body.

She’d wanted the shirt gone, in the stirrings of her mind, and wanted more gone, and in minutes, she wasn’t thinking at all, and there were no ghosts to disturb her, no conscious thought at all. He was a wall of muscle, and dexterity, and he touched her with a searing hunger, a fierce passion that was tempered only by tenderness. She wanted to crawl within him, inside his very skin, come closer with each new wave of raw desire that assailed her. She would have been the one to forgo seduction and foreplay, so eager and desperate had she become, but he was the consummate lover. Yet, she thought, in a far distant corner of her mind, she had been seduced long ago.

Beguiled.

Yet, Lord, was it good ...

His stroke brought her closer to ultimate intimacy, each touch of his lips was a caress against a new zone of her flesh, traveling, discovering, eliciting ever greater abandon. She buried herself against him, writhed, arched, felt the trail of touch and liquid fire bum over her limbs, her breasts, low against her belly. She felt like a ship caught in a storm, swept in a sea of sensation so acute and overwhelming that it left no room for conscious thought or movement His flesh seemed to burn beneath her fingers, a bastion of sinew that aroused with each breath. He moved between her thighs. Sounds escaped her, words, cries ... the storm and sea became a part of her, and though she could not crawl into his flesh, he at last rose above her, and even as he thrust into her, she felt as if the room became a burst of light as an orgasm shook through her with a force that seemed to stop the world. She soared on clouds of ethereal shadows, felt the power of his movement, and flew ever higher.

The night became a blur.

The night.

Deep midnight. Blues of a dark, moonlit sky, the blood-red colors of sunset. Hunger that became an agony of desire, moisture, lava, flying again, sensations of eroticism and fulfillment that left her shaken again and again. Fire and light, ash and shadows; cinders that sparked anew, again and again, to a blaze.

She came so many times, she was intoxicated with the feelings, and then she was exhausted, so replete, and so glad to lie against him. And still, the darkness, just the feel of him beside her, and with it, no nightmares, no ghosts haunting her dreams, no wolves sitting at the foot of her bed. She slept, secure, ecstatic, warmed ...

Safe.

Safe. The world mocked her as she fell into the depths of her sleep.

He remained a stranger. Stranger, by far, than a passerby on the street.

Strange. . .

Was she a total fool?

Totally . . .

Beguiled.

She woke with a pounding headache, groaning aloud, and bemoaning her mix of wine, beer, champagne, and after-dinner drinks. She glanced instantly to the side of her bed.

No one.

For a brief moment, she wondered if she might have enjoyed an alcoholic dream of bizarrely erotic proportions. She realized then that she was naked, and that the fantasy costume lay at the foot of her bed. A glance at the bedside clock told her that it was nearly three in the afternoon. She could hear movement in the hall beyond her door.

The maid, she thought, waiting patiently to get in.

That thought sent her flying out of bed, headache or no. If he had left, her door should be unlocked.

Yet, when she reached it, she found that it was securely bolted.

She stepped back, frowning.

How the hell had he managed that?

Had she imagined it all?

Lord, no, she couldn’t have! There had to be an explanation. He had gotten someone to come, and lock the door from the outside. Surely.

She stared at the door, and her head pounded anew. She walked into the bathroom and quickly downed two Motrin. She turned the water on in the shower, hot and hard, and stood beneath it.

She leaned against the tile, just letting the water wash over her, praying that the Motrin would kick in, and her headache would fade.

She dressed quickly, she’d give her eyeteeth for coffee. She paused by her computer and saw the,

“You’ve got mail!” announcement floating by. She quickly clicked in.

There was an amazing amount of spam, jokes from friends, a note from her agent and at the last, a quick note from the cop in New Orleans who had written the book. “I’d love to talk to you.” He left an address and a phone number.

It was late in Italy; still early in the states. She E-mailed him back, saying that she’d call later, and thanking him for his response.

Armed with both books, she headed upstairs for coffee and something to eat. The American couple was there again, and they greeted her pleasantly. She looked around for Ragnor, but as yet, he hadn’t put in an appearance.

She opened her book and read about a case that had occurred in an Old West mining town near San Francisco when the gold rush had been on. A saloon girl had taken sick after a mysterious miner had passed through town. She’d died; the town lamented her death, and buried her. Nights later, she began to appear to her old customers in their dreams. Three men were taken sick and eventually died. Then they, too, began to appear in dreams. The sheriff was a realistic, logical fellow, but he had still ordered his deputies out by day; the corpses of the “spirits” were exhumed, and their heads severed before they were burned to ash. Afterwards, there were no more appearances, and no more of the strange, fading sicknesses.

She flipped to a case of serial killings in the Midwest in the late fifties. The killer?a white male, thirty years old, married, with one child, and a blue collar job? had thought himself a vampire. His victims had been tortured, raped, and drained of blood. He had gained access through the sliding glass doors of victims’ homes, selecting them because they lived alone in ground floor apartments surrounded by shrubbery.

He wrote letters to the police, warning that “voices” had told him that he was a descendant of Vlad Dracul, and that he was forced to drink blood to survive. The police actually warned women living alone to line their sliding glass doors with garlic, wear large crosses, and keep vials of holy water at hand.